Post Your Comment

38 Comments

If you are going to buy the SB750 boards, you should stay away from Foxconn, because it was recently busted for deliberate sabotaging alternative systems and making shoddy motherboards that are not ACPI-compliant.[1] As strange as it sound, it was Microsoft Certified Motherboard! If that's not enough, currently the company is rated F by Better Business Bureau![2] If you want a reliable computer, stay away from the con that is Foxconn!

I agree to an extent that improved super pi results don't guarantee performance improvements across the board , but 15% improvement is not totally because of cache size getting bigger , there has to be some thing else with the combination of improved cache size like decreased cache latency , improvement in core e.t.c to resulting in improved pi results....

Any way time will tell ... hope fully thing will get better for AMD , Bcz without AMD we are pretty much screwed by Intel. Reply

AMD is in dire straits on the CPU market for sure, but they are in better position on the Graphics and HTPC market with the 4000 series and the 780G.
i dont think that 45nm Phenoms can save the company, by the time 45nm parts arrive Intel will be all over the Nehalem, with DDR3 prices plummeting due to scaling gains. It is a very long shot to infere that 45nm Phenoms can compete with 45nm C2Ds, since these CPUs will reach sub $200 price tags by the time 45nm arrive.

But if AMD can put SB750 on the shelfes right now they may take advantage of the good moment they are living on the graphics market:

b-created HTPCs mobos that can handle triple and quad cores Phenoms and take advantage of the lower power consumption that the SB750 allows, since the only reason to go Intel in a HTPC is the raw performance of C2Ds, something that 3 or 4 cores at 3Ghz+ may confront in equal terms.

Lets use my situation as an example: i WILL have a 4870X2, the very first VGA to allow gaming at 2560x1600, my 30" resolution. I can:

a-Put the 4870X2 on my 18 months old E4300+P5WDH system and wait for Nehalem to build a new system.

b-Dump $300 on a X48/P45 DDR2 mobo and $215 on a E8400

c-Build a quad phenom+SB750 system. But this latter option implies that SB750 will be available at 4870X2 launch and that triple/quad Phenoms prices go lower, right now they cant even compete with the higher performing/2 years old Q6600!

Maybe it is past time for AMD to take the gloves off on the IGP front:
Build an IGP that can allow gaming at 1680x1050/0xAA (the 780G can be overcloked enough to allow gaming at 1280x1024/0xAA) and make all the competitors on the HTPC AND the budget gaming markets run away!
Such a system would convince people that a Phenom may be less powerful than a Core 2, but it runs in a more complete plataform. Thas was the reasoning that carved AMDs market share on the HTPC market with the 780G, why cant it be the reasoning that will dominate the budget/casual gaming market once and for all?! Reply

You make several excellent points. I would like to point out to you that 45nm Denebs are at least 12.5% faster than current Phenoms according to the SuperPi results published a couple of weeks ago. Also remember that K10 architecture historically does very poorly in SuperPi so some analysts suggested that the 12.5% increase is like a worst case scenario for Deneb. PCPer analysts said they have heard from people that have tested K10.5 that it performs between 20 and 30% better than current 65nm Phenoms. Deneb will apparently have much higher IPC according to those results and will comfortably match or exceed Penryn. The only problem on AMD's side is timing. They need to get this "fixed" K10.5 out the door ASAP but it won't arrive until early Q4/2008. Hopefully their Chipset and GPU business will keep them afloat until Deneb hits the market but it will be tight. Reply

A boost of 20-30% would require a complete architectural overhaul, so I would take such claims with a generous pinch of salt. I expect around a 5% boost from the additional cache (application dependent) and another 5% from core tweaks, giving an average gain of a little over 10%, maybe more in certain apps. Reply

One problem with that is that SuperPI is heavily reliant on cache, and Deneb has 3 times the L3 cache that current Phenom has. So using those results to say that Deneb is 15% faster isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison. It may very well have less of a performance increase with other applications. Reply

From what I'm reading here, does it seem reasonable to assume that future higher clocked Phenoms will not be compatible with older 790FX/SB600 boards? I recently went with the 790FX board because from all the road maps that I had seen, AMD was going to make it's near future processors compatible with the socket. And therefore make an easier upgrade path. Does anyone have any insight into this? Reply

I have to agree get the fact right and complete. If the 750 is good enough - I might just wait for it.

Although given the many comments about when will this be published begs the advice that Mr. Scott gave Geordi LaForge in Star Trek - something to the effect "You tell the Captain it'll take 12 hours and when you finish it in 6, you look like a hero." :) Reply

Allow Gary to play with the new chipset, and more interesting results might come to light :)
Even so, this is great news - I wonder if some quick tests of "clock on clock" performance against Intel quad core could be in order. Reply

Hi Gary and all AMD experts :
I am not very technical and would like to understand what this feature means to AMD's market share gain. Is this for a consumer segment or is this for AMD enthusiasts who build systems by themselves ? Are the primary improvements from the power consumption and speed ? Thanks for your help.

This isn't for the consumer, is only for the enthusiast (this is overclocking, and the consumer does not overclock).
Better stability at higher speeds, with lower voltages might mean an faster Phenom (even if validated only for the SB750 platform) might be near - this is good news for AMD, as it will push its performance higher. This is also good news for consumers, as Intel will push its performance higher again, or reply with an price cut/slash. Reply

Quick question, why has the PCI-E bus speed been raised in the last screen? I've always kind of been under the impression that messing with the PCI-E bus speed is more often than not detrimental to stability. Reply

They need something like this to further push the value of the Phenom CPU's pretty desperatly! I can't wait to read a more complete review of the platform with this new SB integrated..

I'm running the 2.5GHz phenom 4x on a 790FX board... Paird with 4GB of DDR2 (800MHz) and a Radeon 3870 I have to say the performance is friggen amazing, absolutly no issues at all gaming on my 19" screen (yeah, you'd probably want to upgrade to a 4870(or x2) to go with a bigger screen) but as far as a solid gaming rig goes, the current platform is great.

This SB with the new BIOS applied would just push the value still farther. It really seems like AMD is rather succesfully carving out a rather nice little value market on the Desktop front, while managing (for now) to hold on to their performance advantages on the server front. Reply

I'm trying to get excited about AMD processors/chipsets as I am about the ATI 4800 series, but nothing in this article does it for me.... so far.

Hopefully the full article will reveal some real-world competition.
As a complete novice PC builder, I got my Q9450 running @ 3.2GHz on 1.3v which is effectively the same as the QX9770 @ stock.

I'm betting the performance of the 9850 @ 3.2 GHz and 1.3875v is still not on par with my Q9450 @ stock.... but I'm hoping I lose this bet... for competitions sake.

I like the choice of memory GSkill DDR2-1066 as it is low voltage, but if you are running Vista 64 please use the full capacity of the motherboard - 8GB. Why bother with x64 and only 4Gb??? you might as well have tested with Vista 32 bit. Reply

Because 4GB is plenty of memory for the system to do everything I've needed it to do (including work with 3GB text files) so far... Your comments about 4GB of memory being wasted on 64bit vista are incorrect, 32bit vista by default only allows 2GB memory per processe while 64b vista removes this limitation... When you do stuff like... Work with 3GB text files this becomes important. Reply

Hey Locutus465,
I don't want to get into an argument with you about my post... if you are happy with 4Gb that is good for you. I'm somewhat surprised though considering you are working on '3Gb text files'...

What on earth is in these text files.... and what software are you using???
I occasionally work on text files max of 1.5Gb but usually smaller files up to 300Mb - often working on multiple files at once. These contain millions of peoples personal details - name, dob, addresses etc. and I usually use TextPad. Just curious to know what you use for the 3Gb files?
Cheers Reply

Well said. And very exciting for me too. This is a wonderful surprise for a Monday Monday. I am just sitting here feeling WOW because I know Anandtech is not about hype - this is the facts, Jakk.

I simply knew something good was going to happen. I think this has huge implications in other areas as well. This might be the place where it all began - again. And it's kinda neat that it's almost an insider thing. I'm in.